Heavy flooding in N. Korea threatens food supply

Thousands homeless; hundreds dead

Burt Herman, The Associated Press

Published 10:00 pm, Tuesday, August 14, 2007

SEOUL, South Korea -- Torrential rains in North Korea have forced thousands of families from their homes and left at least 200 people dead or missing, an aid official said Tuesday, adding that the worst floods there in a decade will worsen Pyongyang's already precarious ability to feed its people.

To cope with damage from the storms that began last week, the North has asked the United Nations to assess the situation in affected regions as part of a preliminary request for assistance -- an indication of the dire situation in the impoverished nation.

North Korea struggles to provide for its people, and as many as 2 million people have died from famine that began in the mid-1990s.

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The government blamed the famine on natural disasters, but it was also caused by outdated farming methods and the loss of the country's Soviet benefactor.

Because of the food shortages, regular North Koreans seek to use all possible arable land in the mountainous country to grow crops -- denuding vast hillsides of natural vegetation and therefore increasing the risk of landslides when heavy rains strike.

The latest floods began last week. North Korean state media reported that "hundreds" were dead or missing, without giving further detail on casualties.

"The material damage so far is estimated to be very big," the official Korean Central News Agency said Tuesday. "This unceasing heavy rain destroyed the nation's major railways, roads and bridges, suspended power supply and cut off the communications network."

North Korean officials told the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies that 200 people were dead or missing across the country, acting delegation head Terje Lysholm said from Pyongyang. He declined to speculate if casualties could rise as officials fully assess the situation.

Lysholm said a total of 63,300 families had been affected by the weather, which destroyed 30,000 homes. Of those, 20,000 houses were in worst-hit Kangwon province, where blocked roads were preventing aid workers from assessing the damage.

About 250,000 acres of farmland has also been washed away, Lysholm said.

"That really definitely has an impact on the food situation for this year and at least one or two years," he said. He said the floods were the worst seen in North Korea in at least a decade.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a South Korean, met with North Korea's U.N. Ambassador Pak Gil Yon in New York to discuss the disaster and offer U.N. assistance.